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If Biden spent that amount for 180 days out of the year, the total would be around $96,000,000. If we were to look at the amount spent on the "trappings" for our civil "servants", I think the amount might come pretty close to the sequester cuts. Include in the number the amount used to provide Congress with their lifetime benefits each year.

It's really getting annoying hearing about another POTUS "campaign tour" for gun control. It's no wonder that this POTUS has trouble dealing with Congress. He never seems to be in DC long enough to have any idea what's really going on in the cloakrooms.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

The White House claims the sequester applies to the budget category known as "projects, programs and activities" and thus it lacks flexibility. Not so: This is a political pose to make the sequester more disruptive. Legally speaking, the sequester applies at a more general level known as "accounts." The air traffic account includes 15,000 controllers out of 31,000 employees. The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to these other non-essential workers.

Instead, the FAA is even imposing the controller furlough on every airport equally, not prioritizing among the largest and busiest airports. San Francisco's Napa Valley airport with no commercial service will absorb the same proportion of the cuts as the central New York radar terminal, which covers La Guardia, JFK and Newark International, as well as MacArthur, Teterboro, New Haven, Republic and other regional fields.

The FAA still uses ground radar and voice-based communications that were the best technology the 1950s had to offer. Many planes are now equipped with advanced avionics that enable more direct and precise flight paths, but they aren't allowed to fly these faster, safer routes because the FAA can't track their navigation methods.

For more than a decade the FAA has promised to modernize and make the civil aviation system more efficient and reliable, but the only things it has reliably generated are delays or cost overruns or usually both. The project, known as NextGen, is four years off schedule with no end in sight.

The FAA's troubles are the result of bad management and a lack of oversight, according to multiple Department of Transportation Inspector General audits. A 2011 investigation found that one part of NextGen ran $330 million over budget—or half of the FAA sequester—and then the FAA paid the contractor responsible $150 million in bonuses that were supposed to be an incentive for making the budget targets. The overruns are now approaching $500 million, and that's merely one item.

If even one of these allegations is accurate, this surely is an agency that needs a thorough house-cleaning.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

Congress passed a bill to let FAA have more flexibility in its spending. Obama said:

Meanwhile, President Obama on Saturday blamed Republicans – first for the cuts, known as sequester, and for the legislation that passed Friday with bipartisan support and that the president is prepared to sign.
"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

As we know, sequester was Obama's idea to get something from the Rs that he wanted. He figured the Rs would never let it actually take effect, so he would then get something else he wanted later. Then when his bluff was called, he blamed the results on the Rs. He insists the Secret Service made the decision to stop the White House tours. I find it impossible to believe that the POTUS could not influence that decision. "Okay, fellas, what do we need to do to keep the WH open?"

Actually, all the Rs have to do is step up to a mic and keep repeating, "This is the D's fault," again, and again, and again on every topic. It works for the Ds.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.